First-Years Scheme, Pray on Eve of Housing Judgment

Students anxiously await lottery results

After a tense night of partying, praying, group dinners and mock sacrifices, the randomized housing assignments for the Class of 2005 were delivered in envelopes to students’ doorsteps this morning.

While many blocking groups spent last night finishing papers and cramming for midterms, some groups got together to endure collectively the excruciating wait for the decision that will influence the next three years of their college lives.

Most first-years said they merely hoped not to get “quadded,” but many went to great lengths to secure the housing assignments of their choice—although they knew the assignments were random.

Ritual Sacrifice

A blocking group consisting of eight creative, resourceful first-years has tried every trick in the book—and come up with a few of their own—to avoid being assigned to a House in the Quad.

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“We all put fake concentrations [on the housing application] that were based on the river, like Sanskrit studies and linguistics,” said Ashley N. Fochtman ’05, one of the eight group members.

“Yeah, no one was allowed to put down astronomy because there’s an observatory by the Quad,” said Meagan M. Marks ’05.

They said they do not believe that the housing process is truly random.

“You can definitely tell the houses have different characters,” Fochtman said.

Adams House tops their list, according to Marks.

“It’s an artsy house, so some of us said we’re visual and environmental studies concentrators, and we’re going to do crayon drawings of Adams to help us get in,” she said.

They even have a contingency plan if they don’t get into Adams House.

“We’re going to build a hut attached to the side of Adams, like the Living Wage Campaign, and stage a sit-in at Adams. Maybe we’ll kidnap a blocking group in the house,” said Marks.

If they cannot get into Adams, a river House is still top priority for the blocking group.

All of their activities last night were geared toward securing the favor of the river House “gods.”